How to Find Old Emails in Office 365?

Himanshu Goyal
Updated On - 23 May 2019

Office 365 is widely used by large organizations across the world, so it is viable that most of the emails are stored in Office 365 mailboxes. The emails or messages are often arranged and grouped by date in the mailbox folder. However, when messages get older, they are automatically grouped in Older group by Office 365. So, it becomes difficult for users to find older messages; basically, that are older than three months.

Also, emails older than one month get deleted automatically by Office 365 and moved to a deleted folder. So, it becomes difficult for users to find older emails. Here we will discuss the process to find old emails in Office 365 as well as the Outlook app.

Find Old Emails/Messages in Outlook App

Finding older messages in Outlook app is very simple. Following the below steps, you can create a search folder and group all messages that are older.

Open Outlook 2016/2013/2010 and click Folder tab, and then select New Search Folder

Now, scroll to Organizing Mail in the opened tab and select Old Mail. By default, Outlook group messages older than one week, you can choose any time period from which you want to group messages. Also, if there are more than one account in your outlook, then you can select that specific email account and click “Ok.”

On clicking Ok, you’ll see that a new folder has been created and added to the Navigation Pane. The folder name will be based on the time you chose while creating a search folder

This is one of the simplest methods to find older messages in MS Outlook. Even if you delete this folder after viewing the messages, only the folder will be removed not the messages.

Finding Old Messages in Outlook Web App

Outlook web app is the most comfortable way to access Office 365 mailboxes. However, you need admin permission to log in to Outlook web app. Know how you can find deleted messages via Outlook web app.

Contact the admin to ask for Outlook web app credentials and login to Outlook web app.

After you log in to Outlook, you’ll see Folders option on the left. Click the arrow to expand the folder.

The folder list will be visible to you, click More to check the old messages.

On clicking More, you’ll find a folder that is named with your email address. Expand the folder to see all its subfolders

In the subfolders, you can find all the older emails within the specific folder name, such as the Inbox items will be available in the INBOX folder.

This seems so easy to perform, and it is. But, Office 365 often delete the older messages, and then users need to recover deleted messages. This can be achieved performing the below steps:

Open Outlook.com with your login credentials.

Now, on the left-hand side, go to the Deleted Items folder.

Click Recover Deleted Items, a window will appear on the screen displaying the emails that can be recovered.

Select the items that you want to recover, and then click Recover.

Deleted items can be recovered quickly if they are available within Office 365 mailboxes. However, if the messages are moved to the active directory, then users need an external tool to backup Office 365 old emails.

Kernel Office 365 Backup Tool to Backup Older/Deleted Messages

Recovering old emails that are deleted automatically from the mailboxes is a bit difficult. But, Kernel Office 365 makes it easy for users by allowing them to backup old as well as deleted emails. Here is an example, how you can backup Office 365 mailboxes with deleted items with Kernel Office 365 Backup tool.

Download and install Kernel Office 365 Backup tool on your system.

Once you launch the tool, you’ll see two options. Select the Backup option to proceed further.

Click the Add button to add your office 365 account. Choose List all the mailboxes to display all mailboxes that are available in the Office 365 account.

Select the type of mailbox that you want to backup from primary mailbox, archive mailbox, or public folder, and then click Migrate.

Select the location on your system where you want to save the backup file and click Ok.

The process will take some time to backup depending on the size of mailboxes. Once it is complete, you’ll receive a notification on your window screen.

Now, you can access the backup PST file with Outlook, and the deleted items will be available in Deleted Folder. Using this tool, you can also restore mailboxes from a PST file to Office 365 account. It is one of the simplest methods to find all the deleted items of an Office 365 account.

Conclusion

Accessing hidden or older messages in Office 365 is not that easy as it seems, especially if they are deleted permanently. So, it’s necessary to use an effective solution that can recover permanently deleted items as well.Export Office 365 to PST Tool is the best tool available in the market that can quickly find deleted emails in Office 365 mailboxes.